Tuesday, 24 November 2009

Krav this

Excellent krav class last night.

The ladies Monday night fitness / self-defence class has been abandoned for now, which means that us regulars (all 3 of us) have joined the general krav maga class. We still do the fitness work though, and although there's less of it, it's possibly more challenging since it's geared for men. Lots of push ups and burpees etc.

After the fitness we moved onto our standard combatives, and then to kicking. Yay for kicking. Hello krav 'stomp' kicking - basically a front pushing kick, then a side stomp then round kick. As a right footed kicker, I really need to work on the power for my left round kick. Then it was on to defending hook punches and clothing grabs.

Krav advocates something called the '360 defence' for attacks to the head and body. It's basically a block using the 'blade' part of your forearm and very familiar to traditional martial artists. It makes perfect sense to me, up to a point. 360 defence is basically an inside block so for hook attacks, I'm happy with this plus an appropriate counter. For straight attacks however, I'm still channelling my most recent 'eclectic' martial arts training, which has silat / Indonesian fundamentals and teaches outside parrying and counters. I drilled that so often, I do it without even really thinking about it (which I suppose proves the effectiveness of drilling!) I like the parrying the way we were taught it - it locks up the opponent's body structure and off balances them for your counter. It also sets them up nicely for sweeps and takedowns. I suspect krav may have similar things later in the syllabus.

The defence against clothing grabs was also interesting. It's basically a modified nikyo wrist lock. Rather than 'goose-necking' the arm, they keep the arm straight. Again with my previous training which also used this defence I found I tended to flow into the full nikyo lock. Either is effective though.

Basically krav has surrended the 'art' for the practical side. No kata or forms here, just smash and run.